After the splendours and plausibilities of Barcelona,[30] the change to the hard-fisted Cortes at Lerida was a shock to the King and his minister. There was no hesitation in the demand of the Catalan Cortes that they must be heard before they would vote anything at all, and they were more inclined to ask the King to repay them what they had advanced to him than to grant him more money. The tone of Philip towards them at first was supplicatory, for they were rich, strong, and united. Mildness, however, was wasted upon the Catalans, and the private meetings of the members and other signs of resistance were considered to be dangerous. Olivares began to threaten, and gave them three days to pass the vote, but the Catalans were still unmoved. Then the Count-Duke, in a panic of fear, suddenly and without notice hurried Philip back to Madrid (May 1626). The Catalans, when he was gone, frightened in their turn, voted what was asked for, but all grace in the act was gone, and a deep chasm thenceforward existed between the eastern realms and the King's favourite in a hurry, who had tried to undermine their ancient liberties. [Sidenote: The independent parliaments] Philip from Madrid tried to appease the Aragonese by voluntarily reducing the contribution they had at length voted; but the result of his journey left not only resentment in the hearts of his non-Castilian subjects, but led to outrageous raids of angry Castilian soldiery into Aragon, and aroused in the King himself a bitter feeling towards the {169} peoples who had been the first to challenge the despotic supremacy which Olivares had taught him was his divine birthright. Philip, indeed, like his immediate predecessors on the throne, was saturated with the idea of his divinely delegated authority. To oppose his will was not disloyalty alone, but impiety, and it was naturally difficult for him to understand that this view, which was generally held by his Castilian subjects, whose kingly traditions were sacerdotal, could not be shared by peoples whose institutions were based upon a purely elective military monarchy, and feudalism modified by a representative democracy. How the anger rankled in his breast is seen in the long exculpatory document which I have several times quoted, which on his return to Madrid he addressed to the Council of Castile.[31] In the course of the document, whilst showing how he, personally, has striven to improve matters, he rates them, and indeed almost everybody, for so imperfectly seconding his efforts. But the hardness of his eastern subjects was evidently that which touched him most.